The Plan:

Day 1: Pork chops with apples, Balsamic roasted brussels sprouts (last of my supply), Mashed potatoes

Day 2: Spaghetti squash burrito bowls

Day 3: Homemade pizza

Day 4: Smoked salmon, Apple and golden beet slaw, Rye bread

Day 5: Taco chili

Day 6: Homemade hummus platter with carrot sticks, radish rounds, olives, and pita chips

Day 7: Lasagna

This meal plan was curated using local foods that are in season now or preserved during the peak growing season in the U.S. Midwest. The plan is an exact replica of what our family is eating this week unless we are out of town. Meal plans are developed using whole foods and my meal planning system (click here!) and are meant to be healthy and easy to prepare. Most recipes will take no more than 30 minutes of active cooking time. Occasionally meals may require all day slow cooking, advanced prep, or some oven time. Recipes are provided when available. I sincerely hope this will help with your own meal planning!

Pantry Shuffle:

Out of Storage: (preserved when in season and coming out of my root cellar, freezer, canned, or dehydrated stash)

• Pork chops and ground beef from Mastodon Valley Farm meat share (freezer)
• Onion and pepper pack, diced tomatoes, and corn (freezer)
• Lasagna (freezer)
• Spaghetti squash, potatoes, garlic (root cellar)
• Apples, carrots, beets, radish (refrigerator “root cellar”)

Into Storage: nothing this week

Notes: Cooking with kids

This week, my 13 year old requested to cook us dinner. He is studying Norse culture in school and would like to make a Norse meal. As you can imagine, in a Scandinavian climate where it is freezing a large part of the year, there is not a big selection of produce. But he managed to come up with modern recipes that are made from foods that were common in that era. Fish, apples, beets, and rye. I’m excited to try out his cooking!

This got me thinking about getting my kids in the kitchen more often. I used to be so good at this and then I don’t know what happened. It is probably what happens with everything else – as the kids get older, they get busier. I have a 7 year old, 10 year old, and 13 year old now and after school is filled with sports, music, and homework. We still eat home cooked meals nightly, just not always together and I have to be creative to prep meals at different times of the day which means the kids aren’t always around when I am cooking. One thing is the same: I still try to hang onto 2-3 evenings per week where we can all be together and sit down for a family meal.

Baking is usually the type of cooking that grabs my kid’s attention since there is often the promise of sugary treats. But I would like to get my kids more involved with actually making meals. Here is what has worked for me in the past:

• Get a step stool for the children that still can’t quite reach high enough to comfortably mix and measure.
• Invite one kid into the kitchen to help with a small task like pouring or mixing. Usually this peaks the interest of the other children and they want to help too.
• To keep them interested, show them harder and harder techniques based on age and experience. Eventually they will be using knives like a pro!
• Let your kids pick out their favorite meals to add to the weekly plan.
• Offer tastes of what you are cooking at various stages – raw veggies, spice mixes, dry ingredients, sauces, and from the pot while it is cooking.  They will start to understand how different flavors come together.
• Take one child to the store to help with the shopping. I don’t recommend taking them all at once if you can help it – too much chaos!
• Quiz them on kitchen measurements. Grams, cups, teaspoons, milliliters, ounces, quarts, etc. I’m a pharmacist and therefore have measurements committed to memory from my medication compounding classes. This translates really well into the kitchen. I think it is useful for everyone to understand the different measurements and how to equate them (e.g. convert cups to ounces or grams). Make it a game!

I’m going to take my own advice and start working these strategies into our daily rhythms. Are you with me?

Cooking is an art that needs to be learned. If you don’t teach your kids, then who will? Give them this life skill now and there will be such a big payoff later. Perhaps one day you will find your child offering to make you a Norse meal!